


Unicorns Are Jerks

by Team_Two_Cats



Series: Suikovember 2020 [5]
Category: Suikoden II, Suikoden Series (Video Games)
Genre: Aggressive Recruiting, Gen, Unicorns
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-21
Updated: 2020-11-21
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:55:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27655819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Team_Two_Cats/pseuds/Team_Two_Cats
Summary: Suikovember 2020 day 21 prompt: RecruitingRiou gets Taki's help tracking down some potential recruits, only for her to take some...drastic steps with a certain unicorn.
Series: Suikovember 2020 [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2019115





	Unicorns Are Jerks

Imagine a montage. Riou on the docks of Coronet, showing Genshu a special sword. Riou looking out over a cliff, Georg Prime standing next to him. A knight in black armor agreeing to fight, as long as it takes him closer to the man he’s lost. The man he’s hunting. Riou walking the paths from Greenhill to all points around, a sturdy sack in one hand, eyes scanning for the signs of squirrels wearing capes.

Riou, scraped and bruised, limps back into the castle. Past the garden, through the dojo. He collapses onto a chair next to Taki.

“Hmm!” the old woman said, starting as if woken from sleep while still standing. “Oh, dearie, you startled me. Hasn’t anyone told you not to sneak up on old women?”

“I..ugh,” Riou holds a shaking hand to his ribs, where one of the flying squirrels managed to headbutt him before he could get them in the sack to… _recruit_. “I finished. Got all of them.”

“Good, good,” she says, and seems ready to nod off again. “Tell the cats that I’ll make them sniff orange rinds again if they try to mark on my window sills.”

“No, Taki, please,” Riou says, “I need to know if there’s any more. The war…we need all the help we can get. Is there anyone else out there.”

Taki nods, but her eyes are closed, her body rocking ever so slightly.

“I don’t know why you bother,” Richmond says. “All she’d got are crazy stories. I could do ten times the work, if you’d only send me out.”

Riou sighs. He needs to find a way to get Richmond moved somewhere else. The dungeon, perhaps? The man might be able to dig up secrets but there’s a saying somewhere about digging through the mud and getting dirty. The man’s filthy, and Riou feels like he has a film of corruption on him whenever he has to talk to the _detective_.

“She might not look like much,” Riou says. “But she’s never wrong. As long as…you interpret what she says correctly.” Riou doesn’t want to think about the times he thought she meant one thing only for the true solution to become obvious…after weeks of work elsewhere.

“But that’s just it,” Richmond says. “She could say anything, and you’d run off, find someone to fight with us, and declare that she called it. It’s bunk!”

“Trees!” Taki says, snapping out of her nap. She turns and looks at Riou. “We’ll need a swimsuit.”

“…we?” Riou asks, but Taki is already scuttling toward the general store, and Riou follows, trusting at least that it will take him far away from Richmond.

\---

Riou doesn’t really know where to look at they move through the trees. On the one hand, he wants to make sure that Taki doesn’t trip on a root or something and hurt herself. On the other hand, the bathing suit, while one piece and relatively modest, is still a bit more form fitting than he’s used to seeing on Taki, and it fills him with strange feelings.

“Just a bit further!” Taki says, hardly even breathing hard despite the trek. She moves right for the trees where the unicorn appeared when Riou helped Hix and Tengaar.

“And you’re sure this is where we’re supposed to go?” Riou asks.

“Don’t question your elders!” Taki snaps, and Riou falls quiet. “You just wait behind a tree with your weapons in case things turn ugly.”

Riou doesn’t really know what she means by that but he does as he’s told and moves behind a tree at the edge of the clearing. Taki puts a hand to her hand and makes a loud distressed noise.

“Oh, to be a beautiful maiden and alone in the forest!” she says, and Riou is surprised to hear her voice _sound_ younger. Could she be…acting? “I certainly hope no strapping equine lotharios happen by to test my innocence and chastity!”

Riou grimaces, definitely not wanting to think about _that_. Though given the location and the bathing suit, Taki’s plan definitely clicks into place. And…he sighs. He should have brought someone else. Eilie, or Tengaar, or…someone.

And yet there’s a sound through the trees and the large form of the unicorn appears. “Is that a maiden is distress I hear? Worry not, oh lady of the divine voice. I am a being of light and energy, an arbiter of womanly beauty. I will keep you safe…”

The unicorn is directly in front of Taki now, and he seems a bit taken aback, like he’s only now getting a good look at what’s in front of him.

“Uh…I mean…” he moves his head closer, and even from his hiding place Riou can see those nostrils flare as he no doubt _smells for innocence_ or whatever unicorns do to tell…that sort of thing.

Which of course means that the ruse is almost up. That Taki will be rejected. That Riou will have to return with someone else, someone a bit more to the unicorn’s tastes, in order to recruit him. A lot of running, a lot of having to convince one of the young women to put up with a lecherous unicorn judging them.

But faster than he thought possible Taki moves. In an instant she has one arm looped around the unicorn’s neck, the other holding something against its hide. The unicorn makes to rear and buck but a sharp hiss from Taki stops him.

“Don’t even _think_ about it,” she says. “I’ve got a knife to a major artery and if you don’t stay calm these old hands might just slip.”

“What are you, nuts?!” the unicorn says, its voice breaking.

Riou rushes out from hiding.

“Hey, you, help me!” the unicorn pleads. “This old bat came out of n— _hey!_ ”

“Watch who you call an old bat!” Taki says. “Now, I think we can all stay _calm_ and do a bit of negotiating, yes?”

“Uh…Taki?” Riou really doesn’t know how to react to all this. “I’m not sure this is the best way to recruit…”

“Shush,” she says. “Now, let’s get down to business. Unicorn blood is said to be incredibly restorative. Eases old aches and pains. Gets rid of wrinkles. A veritable fountain of youth.”

Riou really doesn’t like where this is going. Now that he’s closer he can see that Taki has a knife in her hand, and is holding it flush against the unicorn’s neck.

“A myth!” the unicorn says.

“Like the myth about the unicorn who steals girls for their innocence?”

“Well, hey, I don’t _steal_ girls. I’m a unicorn!”

“And that makes it all different. Uh huh. Sure. So, well, I guess even if I don’t get magical youth, I’ll still be doing a favor to all the girls in the area who won’t be terrorized by a pervy horse anymore.”

“Now see here! I provide a _service!_ The girls…they want their suitors to prove themselves. So I make up trials for those young men and women. To earn their love.”

“And in return you hold the girls captive, maybe try and get them to touch you with promises that the _real_ youth magic is stored…elsewhere?”

“This is outrageous!”

“Oh, so you don’t remember a young girl about sixty years ago who you kidnapped and pressured to do…things to you? Not ringing any bells?”

The unicorn swallows.

“Well, I mean, I was a different unicorn back then I’ve…changed!”

“Sure you have,” she says. “Well, if you haven’t, then you will now. You’re coming with us. You’re going to fight in the war that young master Riou is engaged in. You’re doing to donate your healing blood to our medics to help treat the sick and injured. And if you so much as disturb a hair on the head of any of the young women at the castle, I will come a-visitin’ one night with a silent step and a sharp, sharp knife, to make myself young again. Understood?”

There’s a pause. Then, slowly, the unicorn nods. “I accept those terms, on condition that once the war is over I be allowed free to resume my life.”

“Of course,” Taki says, and pulls the knife away, hiding it…somewhere…with a flick of her wrist. The unicorn pulls back.

“I…I’ll go ahead to the castle,” he says. “I know where it is.”

Riou stares as the unicorn walks off.

So that…happened. He looks back at Taki, unsure of what to say.

“Don’t look so shocked,” she says. “Consider a lesson in… _recruiting_.”

“Uh…you sure it’ll be okay to just let him go after the war?” Riou asks. As much as having a unicorn on their side might be useful, what she had revealed about the creature’s past was…alarming at the least.

“Oh, don’t you worry,” she says. “He’ll go free. He’ll just…go back into the wild a gelding, rather than a stallion.”

And she smiles, the picture of a kindly old lady. “Now, why don’t we get back to the castle and I can get you some warm chocolate chip cookies?”

Riou opens his mouth to say something, thinks better of it, and nods. Maybe she can do something about Richmond, too…

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry but Siegfried is creepy! The whole unicorns and maidens thing is just pretty messed up in general and I don't know I just like that Taki is having none of it now. Cheers!


End file.
